The Hopeful, The Hardheaded and the Homework

Chapter 33: Home Alone and No Chaperone? : Enoch

Saying Enoch was uncomfortable the moment he stepped through the door was like saying that a bat preferred the dark. Olive fussed far too much more than she needed to and Enoch was still struggling to get used to that. It probably should have been nice, having someone care that much, but he was so unaccustomed to anyone who wasn't his mother doing that that he didn't know what to do with it. He was letting Olive in slowly and widening his very independent circle enough to include her, at least a little at a time.

"Okay fine. Get it over wiv and suit yaself. It's a bloomin' bruise. It's fine." The sooner Olive satisfied herself there was nothing to fuss over, the sooner he could leave. Not that going home now was a much better alternative. Enoch had long since switched off his phone to avoid any unwanted contact since he had left.

"You don't know that." Olive patted the couch next her again and after a moment Enoch took a few steps through the doorway and, somewhat awkwardly, sat on the edge of the couch. He'd really only been in the dining room and the kitchen here for any length of time at certain insistence.
Olive had sucked in her bottom lip and was chewing it like she had something to be uncomfortable about. Why she should, Enoch had no idea until she pointed to his chest.
"Your...coat."

Enoch rolled his eyes and reached up to unfasten the buttons of the thick winter coat he almost always wore. "You're seriously gonna be bothered wiv this?" He grumbled but the moment his left arm came out of the sleeve his shoulder stung again and he couldn't help grimacing.

Olive clearly noticed.

"I definitely am now. What on earth did you do to it?"

"I just... 'it a branch, I told ya." Enoch rolled his shoulder and reached up to touch the jumper he was wearing. It did feel slightly damp, and not from the snow. He'd run straight into the dead branch of a tree as he'd weaved around it to beat Olive there. It had snapped, and scratched sharp enough to feel through a coat and the jumper he was wearing beneath it but at the time he'd ignored it purely so he could win the challenge that Olive had started. He didn't quite know what had possessed him to join in but, dare he say, he kind of enjoyed it.

"Enoch."

"What?"

He looked down at himself, trying to figure out exactly what Olive was staring at on his jumper until,
"You're wearing it!" and it sunk it. She was staring at the woollen, military green jumper that Enoch hadn't even intentionally realised was the one she'd bought him when he got dressed.

"Oh, yeah okay..." He flicked his eyes back up to her face and stared at her. Olive was smiling so brightly that he thought she had momentarily forgotten why he was there in the first place. "Olive?"

"Right, sorry..."

Enoch rolled his eyes and reached up to pull at the collar of the jumper and try and stretch it past his shoulder. It half worked and exposed enough of his skin to be able to see the patch reddened by blood and the beginning of a scratch that started close to his collarbone.

" 'Appy? I fink I'll survive. I ain't got the plague or nofin'."

Olive's eyes widened and Enoch could practically hear her mind leaping from conclusion to conclusion. Honestly, it looked a little worse than he'd expected too but it was still little more than a scratch that had drawn blood.

"It's hurting you and you're bleeding, Enoch, you should at least stop that much." Then Olive was on her feet and starting to walk out of the room and Enoch straightened up to attention and let his hand fall and his collar slip back.

"What are ya doin'. Olive..."

"I'll be right back!"

He swore under his breath and reached up a hand to run over his face. Girls. Why he needed to suffer through this was beyond him. After a few moments, hearing the hinge of a door squeaking elsewhere in the house, Enoch got to his feet and wandered around the living room. There were pictures on the coffee table and on the mantelpiece, every inch the typical family home that his house did not have half as many of. He picked up on in a mahogany frame of an extended family, from the look of Olive in it, it couldn't have been taken long ago at all. She didn't look much younger. There was a little curly haired blonde clinging onto Olive's hand, the little girl in the picture Olive had sent him on Christmas who she'd said was her cousin. He replaced the frame and turned around hearing footsteps coming back down the hardwood corridor.